AustLit

Philip Mead reflects on, and develops the themes of, the inaugural Two Fires festival, held in Braidwood, New South Wales in 2005. Focussing on the writing of Judith Wright, Mead argues that Australian literary studies 'has no ethnomethodology ... to "read" activist writers or texts in deictic performance or the relations between the linguistic modes of life-narratives, affect and writing (individual and collective). The relations of poetry and public policy tend to remain inarticulate, phobic.' He further asserts that '[p]art of the difficulty with Wright ... has been in finding terms and methods for the conversation about her writing, including and primarily the poetry, beyond the constricted disciplinary retimes of literary criticism and cultural history.'

Mead also includes a report on the festival contributions provided by Romaine Moreton and Deborah Bird Rose.